Orica’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy provides a global framework to build on both international and local efforts, and includes our focused commitment to gender representation and recognition.
One way of achieving our DEI vision is understanding our Gender Pay Gap (GPG), including identifying any drivers of pay gaps across our countries of operation, to help inform actions and drive sustainable improvement.
As required under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, Orica’s Australian business reported a median base salary GPG of 13.9% to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. While this is lower than our industry comparison of 14.3% we recognise there is more work to be done to continue our progression in closing the pay gap, and we are working hard to continue to improve this.
Orica does not pay people differently based on their gender. However, our GPG is strongly influenced by our workforce representation both in terms of seniority, where we have a lower proportion of women in senior leadership roles; and by the types of roles performed by each gender, where there is a higher proportion of women in administrative or functional support roles which traditionally pay less than technical or operational roles.
Over the past three years we have demonstrated improvements in bridging our GPG, with actions that include reporting and transparency through annual GPG updates to the Board, educating and emphasising GPG performance to leaders during our annual review process, as well as local and global GPG reviews conducted with budgeted funding to address any identified gaps in like-for-like roles.
Orica's ongoing commitment to gender equity has resulted in higher representation of women across our total workforce, including an increase in the percentage of women in senior leadership roles over the past two years (34.9% up from 28.8% in Australia and with a similar shift seen globally). In the most recent reporting period we also observed a higher proportion of females being appointed into both manager and non-manager roles, supporting progress towards a gender balanced workforce. These outcomes have been achieved through tactical initiatives aligned to our DEI Strategy commitments which include setting measurable targets, creating diversity dashboards to report and track progress, developing more inclusive job descriptions and language within our advertisements, and implementing requirements for diverse candidate slates and interview panels.
Orica will remain focused on advancing our DEI Strategy commitments through our Global and regionally tailored DEI Action Plans. All plans are built on three foundational pillars – (i) Building an attractive talent brand, (ii) Creating an inclusive culture, and (iii) Increased leadership accountability. Whilst these plans support our global purpose of improving diversity, embedding equity and supporting an inclusive work culture, specific actions to positively impact gender representation and targeted reduction of the GPG are: continue to improve our existing approach to flexible work and parental leave to be more inclusive and equitable, ongoing pay gap reviews and rectifications, development and implementation of inclusive attraction and retention initiatives, enhancements to diversity data and reporting, leadership education and training programs to support inclusive hiring and awareness on unconscious bias.
At Orica we are committed to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture where our people feel engaged, respected, and connected.